THE PRESS

LECTURE 8

Topic: THE MEDIA: PRESS, RADIO AND TELEVISION

List of questions:

1. Press

2. Radio

3. Television

4. Government and the media

Literature:

1.Нестеров Н.М. Страноведение: Великобритания. Ростов на Дону, «Феникс», 2006.

2. Михайлов Н.Н. Лингвострановедение Англии. М., «Академия», 2003.

3. Артемова А.Ф. Великобритания. Книга для чтения по страноведению. М, «АСТ: Восток-Запад», 2006.

45. M. Pugh A History of Britain. Oxford, 2001.

6. M. Vaughan-Rees In Britain. Lnd., 1999.

Britain’s first newspaper appeared over 300 years ago. Now, as then, newspapers receive no government subsidy, unlike in some other European countries today. Advertising has always been a vital source of income. As long ago as 1660, King Charles II advertised in a newspaper for his lost dog. Today, income from sales is as crucial as income from sales. There are approximately 130 daily and Sunday papers. 1, 400 weekly papers and over 6, 500 periodical publications. More newspapers, proportionately, are sold in Britain than in almost any other countries. The British are great newspaper readers. They used to read even more 50 years ago, when there was no competition from television, but even so almost every adult in the country reads or at least glances at, a daily newspaper. The sales and readership figures are tremendous. The high numbers reflect the fact newspapers are not only popular with educated middle-class but also with working-class people. On average, two out of three people over age 15 read a national morning newspaper. National newspapers have a circulation of about 13 million on weekdays and 17 million on Sundays, but the readership is twice this figure. At first glance, therefore, the British press seems in good health.

The national newspapers, both on weekdays and on Sundays fall into broad categories: “popular” and “quality” press. The more serious, the weightier papers are known as broadsheets, a term which refers to their big page size. The lighter, easier-to-read papers have a page size half as big, and are called tabloids. The Times, Daily Telegraph, Guardian, and Independent are broadsheets; the Sun, Mirror and Star – tabloid in size, but semi-broadsheet in content.

The cultural gulf between the broadsheets and the tabloids is enormous; it is almost seems strange to call them both newspapers. A serious paper like The Independent gives long, detailed news stories with historical analysis, and carefully balanced comment which is usually separate from the news reporting. It has a lot of foreign news; it has sections on books, education and computers; it rarely mentions National Lottery except to discuss its organization. The lightest of the tabloids, the Sun, has very short items on politics and world events in which it freely mixes facts and comment; it has many pages of gossip about TV celebrities and lots sex stories; it has competitions and horoscopes and semi-pornographic photos of women; it is obsessed with lottery and lottery winners.

In spite of the apparently light content of the tabloids, they appear to have as much if not more political influence than broadsheets. Although television has taken over as the main news provider, the law prevents TV from taking sides in politics. So it is left to the newspapers to support parties and give interpretations of the news. None of the daily newspapers is actually run by the political parties, however. Several are owned by companies, controlled by individuals: there is a tradition of rich and powerful press barons. Viscount Rothermere dominates the Mail; Lord Hollick, the Express. Some of these press barons are not English but from Commonwealth countries: Conrad Black of the Daily Telegraph is Canadian; Rupert Murdoch of the Sun is Australian. Actually, Murdoch’s multinational company, News Corporation, also owns The Times, The Sunday Times and the massively popular Sunday paper News of the World; it also controls the satellite TV channel BSkyB various media companies in the USA, satellite TV based in Hong Kong and 70 per cent of all Australian newspapers. Many observers are concerned that with these media interests Murdoch has bought himself too much influence in politics.

The Sun is by far the biggest selling paper in Britain, and it always has a clear political line. In addition, many of its readers are floating voters who change their minds at election time and so decide the results. Throughout the 80s and early 90s it gave solid support to Mrs. Thatcher, and the Conservatives won four elections in succession. As the Labour party moved to the political right, Murdoch deserted his old allies and switch his support to Tony Blair in 1997, so once again The sun was on the winning side. It is not possible to say that Murdoch actually delivered these election results, but in some cases his intervention made a very great impact.

As in all democratic countries, press freedom is an important aspect of British life. In this country, without written constitution, such freedom is not actually set down in the law, but there are no laws restricting it, so the end result is much the same. In fact, it is fairer to say that there are very few laws restricting it; for example, it is illegal to incite racial hatred.

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